Bricks, Beads and Bones

1. Where and When — Geography and Timeline

The Harappan Civilisation (हड़प्पा सभ्यता — the civilisation first identified at a site called Harappa in Punjab, Pakistan) is also called the Indus Valley Civilisation because most of its sites cluster along the Indus river and its tributaries.[NCERT p.1] The total time span is from about 6000 BCE to 1300 BCE, divided into three phases:[NCERT p.1]

Harappan remains have been found across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.[NCERT p.1]

More than 2,000 sites have been discovered so far.[NCERT p.2] Five of them are large enough to be called major cities:

1. Rakhigarhi (Haryana, India — biggest at 550 hectares)
2. Mohenjodaro (Sindh, Pakistan — best preserved)
3. Harappa (Punjab, Pakistan — first discovered, gave the civilisation its name)
4. Dholavira (Gujarat, India)
5. Ganweriwala (Cholistan, Pakistan)

Roughly two-thirds of all Harappan sites sit in the Saraswati river basin, not the Indus — which is why some scholars prefer the name "Indus-Saraswati Civilisation."[NCERT p.2]

2. What They Ate — Subsistence Strategies

The Harappans had a varied diet — both plant and animal foods. Charred (burnt) grains and seeds, studied by archaeo-botanists (पुरा-वनस्पतिशास्त्री), tell us they ate:[NCERT pp.2-3]

• Wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea, sesame (the staple grains)
• Millets in Gujarat
• Rice — but rarely

Animal bones, studied by archaeo-zoologists (पुरा-जीवशास्त्री), come from:[NCERT p.3]

• Domesticated: cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo, pig
• Wild: boar, deer, gharial (a kind of crocodile)
• Fish and fowl — also eaten

We do not know whether the Harappans hunted the wild animals themselves or bartered meat with neighbouring hunting communities — both are possible.[NCERT p.3]

How do we know they ploughed?

Three lines of evidence:[NCERT p.3]

1. Terracotta bull figurines (मिट्टी के बैल — clay bull models) → bulls were known
2. Terracotta plough models found at Cholistan and Banawali (Haryana)
3. An actual ploughed field at Kalibangan (Rajasthan) — Early Harappan layers — showed two sets of furrows at right angles, suggesting two crops grown together at the same time

For irrigation: traces of canals at Shortughai (Afghanistan), water from wells, and large water reservoirs at Dholavira (Gujarat) carved out of stone.[NCERT pp.3-4]

3. A Planned City — Mohenjodaro Up Close

The most unique feature of Harappan civilisation was the development of planned urban centres — cities that didn't grow by accident, but were laid out first and built second.[NCERT p.5]

Two parts: Citadel and Lower Town

Mohenjodaro is divided into:

• The Citadel (गढ़ी — fortified, raised area) — smaller but built on mud-brick platforms, making it higher. Walled off from the rest of the city.[NCERT pp.5-6]
• The Lower Town (नीचला नगर — main residential area) — larger, also walled, with houses on platforms.[NCERT p.6]

To put these platforms in place, one estimate says it would have taken four million person-days of labour — meaning huge organisation of workers.[NCERT p.6]

Streets and drains — the grid

Streets ran in an approximate grid pattern, intersecting at right angles. Drains were laid out first, houses second — every house's wall had to touch a street so domestic waste water could flow into the street drains.[NCERT p.6]

The drainage system was so complete that the British excavator Ernest Mackay called it "the most complete ancient system as yet discovered."[NCERT p.7] Features:

• Main channels of bricks set in mortar
• Covered with loose bricks (or limestone slabs) that could be removed for cleaning
• Long channels had sumps (settling pits) at intervals for cleaning
• House waste flowed into a cesspit first (solids settle), then clean water flowed into the street drain

This was not just in Mohenjodaro — even small sites like Lothal had burnt-brick drains (while houses there were mud-brick).[NCERT p.7]

Uniform bricks across the civilisation

All Harappan bricks — sun-dried or baked — had a standardised ratio of 4 : 2 : 1 (length : breadth : height). The exact size could vary, but the ratio was constant from Jammu to Gujarat.[NCERT pp.6, 16] That kind of uniformity over thousands of kilometres is the smoking gun of central planning.

Domestic houses

Many Lower Town houses were courtyard houses — rooms on all four sides of an open central court. The courtyard was where cooking and weaving happened (especially in hot/dry weather):[NCERT p.7]

• No windows on the ground floor walls — privacy mattered
• Main entrance did not directly face the courtyard — also for privacy
• Every house had its own bathroom with brick floors and drains connected to the street
• Wells in many houses — Mohenjodaro had ~700 wells total
• Some houses had staircases to a second storey or roof

The Citadel: Great Bath and Warehouse

On the Citadel were two famous structures:[NCERT p.8]

1. The Great Bath — a large rectangular tank in a courtyard surrounded by a corridor. Watertight (bricks on edge + gypsum mortar). Steps led down into the tank. Water flowed out via a huge drain. Across a lane, a smaller building had eight bathrooms (4 + 4). Scholars think it was used for some special ritual bathing — but we cannot be sure.
2. The Warehouse — a massive structure of which only the lower brick portions remain (upper wooden parts decayed). Probably for storing grain or goods.

4. Tracking Social Differences — Rich and Poor?

Archaeologists look for social differences in two main ways:[NCERT p.9]

4.1 Burials

The Harappans usually buried their dead in pits. Some pits were lined with bricks, some were plain. Some had pottery and ornaments buried with the body (suggesting belief in an afterlife — परलोक — next world), some did not.

A few notable finds:[NCERT p.9]

• An ornament of three shell rings + a jasper bead + hundreds of micro-beads near a male skull at Harappa
• Copper mirrors with some graves
• Jewellery in graves of both men and women

But — and this is important — on the whole, the Harappans did NOT bury precious things with the dead. Compare this with Egypt's pyramids (same time period), where pharaohs were buried with vast wealth. Harappan burials look more egalitarian.

4.2 Luxuries vs. Utilitarian

Archaeologists classify objects as either:

• Utilitarian (दैनिक उपयोग की चीज़ें) — daily-use, made of cheap local material (stone, clay): querns, pottery, needles, scrubbers. Found everywhere.
• Luxury (विलासिता की चीज़ें) — rare, made of expensive non-local material or with complex technology: faience (a fired paste of ground sand + colour + gum), gold, lapis lazuli.

What does the distribution tell us? Rare luxury objects (e.g., faience perfume pots) concentrate in big cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa, are absent in small sites like Kalibangan.[NCERT p.10] Gold was rare and always found in hoards (छिपा कर रखी गई पूंजी — hidden treasure caches).

So: there were social differences — but they were moderate, not extreme like in Egypt or Mesopotamia.

5. Crafts and Workshops — Making Beads and Pots

Materials and centres

The Harappans were master craftspeople. They made:[NCERT pp.10-11]

• Beads from many materials: carnelian (अकीक), jasper, crystal, quartz, steatite (सेलखड़ी — very soft stone), copper, bronze, gold, shell, faience, terracotta
• Pottery — distinctive red-and-black designs
• Seals of steatite
• Weights of chert (a hard stone)
• Shell objects — bangles, ladles, inlay

Specialised craft centres included:

Carnelian — the red bead

Making a red carnelian bead was a craft of patience:[NCERT p.11]

1. Fire the yellowish raw stone → turns red
2. Chip into rough shape
3. Flake finely into final form
4. Grind, polish, drill with specialised drills (found at Chanhudaro, Lothal, Dholavira)

The deep red colour came from firing at different stages.

How do archaeologists spot a workshop?

Four clues:[NCERT pp.11-12]

1. Raw material stockpiles (stone nodules, whole shells, copper ore)
2. Tools (drills, chisels)
3. Unfinished objects (half-flaked beads)
4. Rejects and waste — especially tiny waste flakes left behind in the work area

The presence of waste is the strongest single indicator — finished objects are everywhere, but waste only piles up where things are made.

6. Where Materials Came From — Trade Routes

Materials within the subcontinent

Some materials were local (clay), others had to be procured from distant regions:[NCERT p.12]

The Harappans either set up direct settlements near sources (like Nageshwar for shell, Shortughai for lapis), or sent expeditions to procure raw materials.

Contact with Oman and Mesopotamia

Long-distance contact is proven by:[NCERT pp.13-14]

1. Copper in Oman and Harappan artefacts both contain nickel traces → common origin → Harappans imported copper from Oman
2. A Harappan jar coated with thick black clay found at an Omani site — probably to seal liquid contents (oil? wine?)
3. Mesopotamian texts (3rd millennium BCE) mention three places:
   • Dilmun (probably Bahrain)
   • Magan (probably Oman)
   • Meluhha (probably the Harappan region!) — exported carnelian, lapis lazuli, copper, gold, varieties of wood
4. Cylinder seals in Mesopotamia carrying humped-bull motifs typical of the Indus region
5. Mesopotamian texts mention that Meluhha is "a land of seafarers" — implying sea routes

A Mesopotamian myth says of Meluhha: "May your bird be the haja-bird, may its call be heard in the royal palace." Some scholars think the haja-bird was the peacock — named perhaps from its call.

7. Writing, Seals, and Weights

7.1 Seals and sealings

Seals were used to secure long-distance shipments:[NCERT p.15]

1. Goods went into a sack/jar
2. Mouth was tied with rope
3. Wet clay was pressed on the knot
4. A steatite seal was pressed into the clay → left an impression
5. If the seal arrived unbroken, the goods had not been tampered with
6. The seal also said who sent it

A seal typically had:

• A carved animal motif (often a "unicorn" — an animal in profile with one horn visible, possibly a bull)
• A line of writing above the animal (probably the owner's name and title)

7.2 The undeciphered script

Harappan writing has:

• Between 375 and 400 distinct signs
• Most inscriptions are very short (the longest is just 26 signs)
• Written right to left — we know because some seals show cramped spacing on the left (the engraver ran out of room)
• Found on seals, copper tools, jar rims, copper and terracotta tablets, jewellery, bone rods, and an ancient signboard at Dholavira[NCERT p.15]

Why is it not deciphered? Because:

• It is not alphabetic — 375+ signs is too many for an alphabet (English has 26). It is probably logographic or syllabic (signs = words or syllables).
• No bilingual inscription has ever been found — unlike the Rosetta Stone which let Egyptian hieroglyphs be cracked using Greek alongside.
• The inscriptions are too short to give statistical patterns.

So the script stays a mystery — meaning we cannot read names, religious ideas, laws, or stories of the Harappans. We only know them through their stuff.

7.3 Weights

Exchange was regulated by a precise weight system:[NCERT pp.15-16]

• Weights were made of chert (a hard stone), usually cubical, with no markings
• Smaller weights: binary — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 (each is double the previous)
• Larger weights: decimal — 160, 200, 320, 640
• Used with metal scale-pans (found at sites)

This dual system — binary for small, decimal for large — is unusual. Even today, the binary doubling pattern is used in Indian weighing: 100 g, 200 g, 500 g, 1 kg, 2 kg…

8. Who Ruled? — Ancient Authority

What demands explanation

Several patterns point to strong central coordination:[NCERT p.16]

• Uniform pottery, seals, weights, bricks across the entire civilisation (Jammu to Gujarat)
• Settlements strategically placed near raw-material sources (Nageshwar for shell, Lothal near carnelian, etc.)
• Massive labour mobilisation for platforms and walls (estimated 4 million person-days at Mohenjodaro alone)

Someone or some institution organised all this. But we cannot find them in the archaeological record.

Three competing theories

The "priest-king"

A stone statue of a bearded man with a diadem (cloth band) and a draped shawl was labelled the "priest-king" by John Marshall in the 1920s.[NCERT p.16] Why?

• Because Marshall was familiar with Mesopotamian "priest-kings" — leaders who were both religious and political
• He assumed Harappa would have parallels

But we have no proof this statue was a priest, a king, both, or neither. It's just a famous stone face we call the priest-king out of habit.

What we can say

The truth is probably somewhere between. The most defensible position: Harappans practised some kind of distributed authority — perhaps a council-based or cooperative system — that managed standardisation across a huge area without leaving behind a single throne, crown, or named king.[NCERT p.17]

9. The End of the Harappans

What changed

By about 1800 BCE, most Mature Harappan sites were abandoned. The few that continued show major changes:[NCERT p.17]

• Distinctive artefacts disappear: weights, seals, special beads
• Writing disappears
• Long-distance trade disappears
• Craft specialisation disappears
• House construction deteriorates — smaller, simpler buildings
• Large public structures stop being built
• Overall: a shift back to a rural way of life

This is called the Late Harappan or "successor cultures" phase.

Why? Several possibilities

Scholars have suggested:[NCERT p.17]

1. Climatic change — drier conditions
2. Deforestation — overuse of timber
3. Excessive floods
4. Shifting/drying rivers — especially the Saraswati basin (where two-thirds of sites were)
5. Overuse of the landscape
6. End of a unifying political system — perhaps the "Harappan state" collapsed

No single cause explains everything. Climate may have hit some regions but not others. The shift to villages and decline of seals/script/trade is so total that something more fundamental — perhaps the collapse of a unifying state — seems necessary.

What about an invasion?

In 1947, archaeologist R.E.M. Wheeler suggested an Aryan invasion explained the decline — pointing to skeletons at Mohenjodaro as "massacre victims".[NCERT p.18]

This theory is no longer accepted. In the 1960s, George Dales showed:

• The skeletons came from different periods, not a single massacre
• There was no destruction layer marking a violent end
• No bodies of warriors with weapons
• No final defence at the Citadel

Most importantly, recent archaeogenetic research at Rakhigarhi (DNA from skeletal remains) shows:[NCERT p.18]

• Harappan DNA traces back to 10,000 BCE in this region
• A majority of the modern South Asian population are their descendants
• No genetic break marking a large-scale invasion

So the Harappans were indigenous people, their genes carried on, but their civilisation — the cities, the script, the trade network — slowly faded.

After the Harappans, the subcontinent had to wait over a thousand years for new cities to develop, this time in the Ganga valley.[NCERT p.17]

10. How Archaeologists Discovered It

10.1 Cunningham (1860s-70s) — missed it entirely

Alexander Cunningham, the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), was given a Harappan seal in the 1870s.[NCERT p.19] He recorded it but could not place it in time — he assumed Indian history began with cities in the Ganga valley.

Worse, the actual site of Harappa was being destroyed by brick-robbers building the Lahore-Multan railway. Cunningham noted enough bricks were taken from Harappa to lay "about 100 miles" of railway line. By the time archaeologists realised what they had, Harappa was severely damaged.[NCERT p.6]

10.2 Sahni, Banerji, Marshall (1920s) — the breakthrough

In the early 1920s, two ASI archaeologists made the discovery:

• Daya Ram Sahni found seals at Harappa in layers much older than Early Historic times
• Rakhal Das Banerji found similar seals at Mohenjodaro

In 1924, John Marshall (then ASI Director-General) announced to the world that a new civilisation, contemporaneous with Mesopotamia, had been discovered in the Indus valley.[NCERT p.20]

S.N. Roy famously wrote that "Marshall left India three thousand years older than he had found her."

Marshall's contribution and his flaw:

• ✅ He was the first professional archaeologist working in India, with experience in Greece and Crete
• ❌ He excavated in uniform horizontal layers, ignoring the natural stratigraphy (the way layers actually stack) — so artefacts from different time periods got mixed together. Valuable context was lost forever.

10.3 Wheeler (1940s) — military precision

R.E.M. Wheeler, an ex-army brigadier, took over the ASI in 1944. He brought:

• A focus on following the natural stratigraphy (excavating one layer at a time, in order)
• "Military precision" to excavation[NCERT p.21]

This is the standard method today.

10.4 Post-1947 — the Indian side

When Pakistan was created in 1947, most known major Harappan sites (Harappa, Mohenjodaro) fell into Pakistan. Indian archaeologists then focused on finding sites in India:[NCERT p.21]

• Kalibangan (Rajasthan)
• Lothal (Gujarat)
• Rakhigarhi (Haryana — now the biggest known Harappan city)
• Dholavira (Gujarat)

10.5 Since the 1980s — international, scientific

Modern Harappan archaeology is international and scientific:[NCERT p.21]

• Indian and foreign specialists collaborating at Harappa and Mohenjodaro
• Surface exploration, chemical analysis of materials
• Recent: archaeogenetic research at Rakhigarhi (DNA from skeletons → confirmed Harappan indigeneity)

11. Piecing the Past Together — Interpretation

Why interpretation is hard

Three challenges:[NCERT p.22]

1. Decay — organic materials (cloth, leather, wood, reeds) decompose, especially in tropical India. Only stone, terracotta, metal survive. So we know what they pottered and forged — not what they wore.
2. Selection bias — only broken or useless items get thrown away (and so preserved). Valuable items were either lost or hoarded (and so accidentally preserved). What we find is not typical of what they owned.
3. Recycling — many items were melted down, re-used, modified. The full picture is missing pieces.

Classifying finds

Once recovered, finds are classified by:[NCERT p.22]

• Material: stone, clay, metal, bone, ivory
• Function (harder): is this a tool? An ornament? A ritual object? Something else?

Function is tricky because:

• Sometimes function is obvious from resemblance with present-day items (beads, querns, blades, pots)
• Sometimes from context — was it found in a house, a drain, a grave, a kiln?
• Sometimes we rely on indirect evidence — e.g., we know they used cotton (traces exist) but to figure out clothing we look at sculptures

The case of the "mother goddess"

Early archaeologists labelled certain terracotta female figurines (heavily jewelled, with elaborate head-dresses) as "mother goddesses" — religious idols.[NCERT p.23]

• This was an assumption from contemporary Mesopotamian parallels
• The figurines might be goddesses
• They might equally be toys, family heirlooms, decorative items, or votive offerings
• We cannot be sure

Similar uncertainty surrounds the "priest-king" statue (see Section 8) and structures like the Great Bath and the fire altars at Kalibangan and Lothal.

The lesson

The Harappan civilisation is a powerful reminder that history is reconstructed, not retrieved. Archaeologists piece together fragments using:

• Direct evidence (the find itself)
• Context (where it was found, in which layer, near what else)
• Analogy (resemblance to known objects)
• Cross-cultural comparison (Mesopotamia, Egypt)

Every reconstruction is provisional — open to revision when better evidence comes (like the Rakhigarhi DNA work overturning the Aryan invasion theory).